Background of The Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of The Study

Film is an audiovisual media. According to Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, film is a series of moving pictures recorded with sound that tells a story, shown on television or at the cinema or movie theatre. 1 Film is another alternative of media for narrating a story, the story refers to a fabricated story which is created based on either imagination or reality, either film or literary work contains fabricated story which brings messages, criticisms, or new aspiration toward a particular set of social values. The possibility of noticing symptomatic meanings reminds us that all meaning, wheather referential, explicit, or implicit is a social phenomenon. 2 In film, the spectators know that someone invented and guided the action from the audio and visual. Film is the life picture which is one of the form of art. The popular form of the entertainment and also business and film is unique, set part from all other media by its quality of free and constant motion. 3 Nowadays, film is considered to be an important art form and a source of popular entertainment that people mostly like. Film mostly reflects the social 1 A.S Hornby, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, sixth edition New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, P.496. 2 David Boordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, fourth edition New York: Mc-Graw Hill, Inc, 1993 P.52 3 Joseph M. Boggs and Petrie W. Dennis, The Art of Watching Films, fifth edition USA: Mayfield Publishing, 2000, P.2 condition in certain community. As social documentary, film exposes issue rising in surrounding such as political issue, social issue, global issue, gender issue, etc. Such issue reflect what has been going on in society. For the last two decades many films have begun to use girl as the central characters of the story. Those films try to bring about issues related to girl. The emerge of feminist movement has become one of several reasons why girl are put as the centre of the story. There are several films focused on issues of feminism, such as The Secret Life of Bees and The Color Purple. These films are about the life of a girl who has to face a lot of problems or obstacles in her life in order to make her life better than before and to get freedom from society oppression. For instance, The Secret Life of Bees is 2009 American film that presents Rosalleen, as a girl who gets violence from three men in town and then she is thrown into jail and often gets inequalities from men. Meanwhile, The Color Purple is 2008 American film directed by Steven Spielberg. This film is about a story of a young African- American girl named Celie. A fourteen years girl who has two children by her step father who takes them away from her at childbirth and forces Celie to marry with a local widower who treats Celie like a slave. Those are examples about the life of girls described in film. They get many obstacles in their life. Besides that, they only get little love and attention from the society and family. However, in the end of the story the girl’s characters can solves all the obstacles that make them independent and mature girls. Another film that exposes issue of feminism is Precious. Precious is a 2009 American drama film directed by Lee Daniels, and it is an adoptation from the novel Push written by Sapphire. The main character is Precious Jones. She is 16 years-old, overweight, illiterate who lives in the Ghetto of Harlem in the 20th century. She lives with her dysfunctional and abusive mother, Mary. She has been impregnated twice by her step father, Carl and suffers long term physical sexual and mental abuse from her unemployed mother. Her first child Lil Mango has down syndrome and is being cared for by Precious’s grandmother. Following the discovery of Precious second pregnancy, she is suspended from school. Her Junior High School Principal arranges to have her attend an alternative school which she hopes can help Precious to change her life’s direction. Precious finds a way out of her traumatic daily existence through imagination and fantasy. Usually, her imagination and fantasy happened when she is being raped by her step father. She looks at the ceiling and imagines herself in a music, video shoot, in which she is the superstar and the focus of attention while looking in photograph albums, and she imagines the pictures talking to her. When she looks in the mirror, she sees a pretty, white, thin, blonde girl. Inspired by her new teacher in her alternative school Blu Rain, Precious begins to learn hard and tries to read, write the letter, and she must adaptation with her new friends too. Then, she gives birth to her second child, Abdul and after her mother Mary deliberately drops three-day-old Abdul and hits Precious, Precious fights back long enough to get her son and flees her home permanently. Shortly, after leaving the house, Precious breaks into her school classroom and finally lives in her teacher’s house. The end of the film Precious still resolves to improve her life for herself and her children. She severs ties with her mother and plans to complete a General Educational Development test 4 . The film tells about a girl in self-awareness of her love life, relationship, and struggle. It is based on principles of self-exploration, self-empowerment, and self-liberation. One of the reasons why the writer chooses this film is because the main character is a girl. This girl struggles to have her freedom and liberation from society oppression. Therefore, the writer is interested to analyze it more deeply by using feminism approach, especially more about the feminism ideologies through the main character and the writer wants to see the main character of Precious described in the Precious film. 4 General Educational Development GED test are a group of five subjects test which, when passed, certify that the taker has American or Canadian high school level academic skills. The GED is sometimes reffered to as a General Equivalency Diploma or General Education Diploma .

B. Focus of the study